Road Safety Bill [Lords] - Standing Committee A

[Janet Anderson in the Chair]

Road Safety Bill [Lords]

Stephen Ladyman: On a point of order, Mrs. Anderson. I welcome you to the Chair. We look forward to serving under your chairmanship. In our previous sitting, Sir Nicholas asked the Government to make available to members of the Committee copies of past legislation on this subject, much of which is being amended by the Bill. I have looked into how we might do that.
Unfortunately, the printed version of the legislation is so old that it would be confusing. It has never been reprinted since having been amended over the years by various Acts. Copyright rules do not allow us to print the online version of the legislation that the Government use and make it available to hon. Members. However, the Library has identified an online version that is available to all hon. Members. In the letter to Sir Nicholas, copies of which I have put on the centre table, the Library has provided instructions so that all hon. Members can access the online version and print it out for themselves.

Janet Anderson: Thank you. I am sure that such information is helpful to all members of the Committee.

Clause 8 - Driving record

Stephen Hammond: I beg to move amendment No. 32, in clause 8, page 5, line 17, leave out paragraph (e).

Janet Anderson: With this it will be convenient to discuss the following amendments: No. 33, in clause 8, page 5, line 19, leave out subsection (3).
No. 34, in clause 8, page 5, line 21, leave out subsection (4).

Stephen Hammond: On behalf of my colleagues, I wish to say how much we look forward to serving under your chairmanship, Mrs. Anderson. Clause 8 removes the necessity for the police to inspect the driving licence counterpart or for that counterpart to be presented before, among other things, the issuance of a fixed penalty notice. We have no problem with the intent of the clause, and neither do we think it anything other than reasonable that the police, court officials and the fixed penalty clerks should be able to access an individual’s driving record and the information held on that record. However, I look forward to hearing the  Minister’s explanation of the exact difference between the driving record in relation to a person as maintained by the Secretary of State, and the driving licence.
Our worries about the clause are twofold, and amendment No. 32 seeks to address the problem. We accept the necessity for fixed penalty clerks, constables and courts to access the records, but I seek reassurance from the Minister on several matters. Why must
“other persons prescribed in regulations made by the Secretary of State”
have access? Exactly whom do the Government have in mind to be that class of person? When will the Secretary of State make the regulations? Perhaps we can be given examples of the circumstances in which they will be made.
I want to clarify exactly the real issue of the misuse of official information. If the amendment were not accepted or we did not receive from the Minister the reassurance that we want, a huge number of people could easily gain access to driving records and use that information for profit. Let us suppose that the Minister prescribed that access be granted for individuals to run a Government road safety campaign on speeding. If one of those individuals were rather less than scrupulous, he could sell the information to a company that makes speed detection devices or harass people—even members of this Committee—who have several points on their licence.
I have a vision of a multitude of prescribed people trawling through records, mischievously attempting to find information of commercial worth that they could supply either to corporate companies or indeed to the fourth estate for profit. We want reassurance from the Minister about why subsection (2)(e) is needed. Whom is his Department likely to prescribe and what steps does he intend to put in place to ensure that such sensitive information is not misused? I am also slightly intrigued about why the Government wish to take the powers solely for the driver. I await the Minister’s answer. Are the powers that pertain to the vehicle already satisfactory and extensive enough? If they are not, we will happily help him frame a suitable clause if he wishes us to do so.
Amendments Nos. 33 and 34 deal with our worry about the increasing size of secondary legislation, and to some extent are consequential on the acceptance of amendment No. 32. We want to see as much as possible dealt with by the Bill, instead of by statutory instrument.

Stephen Ladyman: My apologies to you, Mrs. Anderson, for the fact that you had difficulty getting here on time today because of the traffic. I understand that it was London traffic, however, and therefore is the responsibility of the Mayor and not me.
I am grateful to the hon. Member for Wimbledon (Stephen Hammond) for giving me the opportunity to explain what the clause does and to discuss his amendments. In our last sitting, Sir Nicholas was kind enough to give me a little leeway, because some clauses make sense only if discussed in association with others. Therefore, I shall explain not only what clause 8 does but what clauses 9 and 10 do, because they make sense only as a package.
My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, South (Mr. Harris), who is not quite with us yet, told us that he has six points on his licence. It is fairly well known that once upon a time I had nine points on mine. I hasten to add that I have addressed my offending behaviour and that, as the points are now all four years old, they are expunged.
The legal record of our endorsements is the paper counterpart that the individual holds. Any record of endorsements held by the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency is held simply for administrative purposes and to ensure that, should one lose one’s licence or should an appropriate person need to check that the licence is genuine, it has a record of the number of points that have been accumulated over the years. However, the legal record is the paper licence. Therefore, if a policeman is to offer someone a fixed penalty of, say, three points and a fine instead of taking them to court, he must first check the legal record to see how many points have previously been accumulated. Clearly if one is in the position that I was in for a period, with nine points on the licence, the next three points mean a court case and disqualification. The policeman must therefore check the legal record before he can issue a three-point standing penalty. Without being able to check the legal record, he does not know whether the offence in question is the first offence, the third offence or the 53rd offence.
The consequence is that a person who does not have a paper counterpart cannot be issued with a fixed penalty notice, and that applies to foreign drivers. People from the rest of the European Union who are driving in this country do not have a counterpart to their licence; they simply show us their national licence. The police cannot, therefore, check their situation and issue them with a fixed penalty. Likewise, somebody who has lost their paper counterpart cannot present it to the police to get a fixed penalty notice.
If we allowed that situation to persist, it would make nonsense of the later clauses in the Bill, under which we take a deposit from people rather than allow them to abscond without paying the fixed penalty notices, and other measures in the Bill would not work either. We must therefore legislate to make the DVLA’s database the legal record. The paper counterpart will then no longer be the legal record. It will simply be a person’s reminder that penalty points have been awarded. When the legal record is the DVLA database, it will be appropriate to say that the police and others, when deciding whether to issue a fixed penalty, must be able to access that database.
First, clauses 8, 9 and 10 therefore change the legal record from the paper counterpart to the DVLA database. Secondly, they provide for foreign drivers who do not have a paper counterpart to be prosecuted from the new legal record—the DVLA database. Clause 10 extends that provision to those who carry a British driving licence. The idea is that, over the next two to three years, we will migrate the way in which we issue penalty notices to ensure that the enforcement can take place from the new legal record. The reason why that needs to be done in stages over two to three  years is purely administrative and technical. As a result of the way the computers and databases are constructed, it cannot be done all at once.
I take it that these are probing amendments that are intended to query to whom we will allow access to the database. Clearly, the police will have access to it. There are reasons why we want the Secretary of State to have the opportunity to use secondary legislation in the future to change the access arrangements. First, there might be good reasons why we want to give others access to it in future. The hon. Member for Wimbledon asked for examples of where that would be appropriate. One would relate to Hackney carriage authorities: local authorities deciding on licences for taxi drivers. They need to check whether individuals have a clean driving licence before issuing a taxi licence. We might give the power to that group.
I stress that we have no plans at this stage to do this, but we ought to be debating and considering whether would we want insurance companies to have access to the information. They are another possible group. Many of our colleagues in the House have confessed to me that they did not realise that they were supposed to tell their insurance company when they got speeding points. That convenient lapse of memory on some people’s behalf probably saves them a great deal of money, because as soon as someone starts accumulating speeding points, their premiums go up.
It might be that at some future point we will want insurance companies automatically to be able to check whether someone has speeding points, in order to ensure that people who do are honest about it and pay the appropriate premiums. We have no plans along those lines, but as parliamentarians, we might want to discuss and consider the matter at some point in the future. We might reasonably want to give people access to the database in such areas.
When we proposed the idea originally, only the negative procedure was to be used for the statutory instrument. We were advised by Committees of Parliament that people thought that the matter was so serious that it should be dealt with through the affirmative procedure. The Bill now includes provision for the affirmative procedure, so any secondary legislation that is introduced will need the positive confirmation of both Houses. That is appropriate, given the seriousness of the matter.
The hon. Gentleman briefly touched on access to public information such as the vehicle record. There has been some debate on that issue recently. He will be aware that there is a great deal of controversy about access to the vehicle record that the DVLA holds and about whether the DVLA is giving that information out to the right people. It is required to give it out to people who have a lawful right to have it. People who have a justifiable claim to see the vehicle record have a lawful right to have access to it, but that is not clearly defined in the legislation.
In order to clarify to whom it is appropriate to give vehicle information in future, I have announced a thorough consultation on the matter, after which we will consider whether we should change the rules about accessing the vehicle record. The clause has nothing to  do with the vehicle record; it is concerned with the driver record. Currently, the only people who would see the legal driver record—the counterpart—are those to whom the driver willingly shows it or is required to show it to because legislation gives someone the power to see it. Our intention in the first instance, at least, is that the only people who will have access to the new driver record are those exact same groups of people.

Stephen Hammond: First, I want to be clear from what the Minister just said that he accepts that paragraph (e) would expand the number of people who have a lawful right to that record. Secondly, in respect of the consultation procedure that he is about to put in place, will he reassure us about the penalties that the Government will impose for the misuse of the information?

Stephen Ladyman: The consultation is about access to the vehicle records. At this stage, we do not know whether we will need to change the law. When the consultation has finished and Parliament and the public have formed a view about who should and should not have access to the vehicle records, we will have to decide whether existing law allows us to restrict the information to that group of people or whether we will have to change the law. I cannot be definitive until we have completed that consultation.
However, many people have contacted me to say, “How dare the DVLA give away my personal details just on the basis of somebody having my registration number? You must only ever give them to the police.” When I explain to them that as a consequence, private car park companies could enforce car parking restrictions only by using clampers, rather than taking number plate details and sending a bill later, people suddenly start to think, “Perhaps it is not as simple as we thought; perhaps there is good reason for certain people under certain circumstances to be able to get that information.”
The consultation that we have to go through will be complex, and until it ends I cannot say how the law will be used. However, there are clear penalties for the misuse of such information under data protection, vehicle registration legislation and so on. Once we know the results of the consultation, we will use such penalties rigorously to ensure that the information is restricted.
The hon. Gentleman is right to say that the Secretary of State could extend the groups of people who have access to the counterfeit information. He could, but he has no plans to do so, and would need the approval of both Houses before he did.

Stephen Hammond: The Minister inadvertently said “counterfeit”; I am sure he meant “counterpart information”.

Stephen Ladyman: I did mean “counterpart”. The hon. Gentleman is right, and one of the benefits of the Bill is that it will also seriously reduce the number of people with counterfeit counterparts.

Owen Paterson: I welcome you to the Chair, Mrs. Anderson. We were kept firmly in line by Sir Nicholas in our previous sitting. You will be pleased to hear that I was the first to be tripped up by him and kept in line. You have struggled through the traffic, and it is good to see you. We look forward to your chairmanship.
Will the Minister clarify a point about the information coming out of the DVLA? He used the word “give” twice, but there are rumours that people have been paying for the information.

Stephen Ladyman: Certainly people do pay for the information. Many tabloid newspapers that are worried about this have used the word “sell” to imply that the DVLA is making money from it. However, legislation prevents the DVLA from using public money to subsidise private enterprises, so, when giving out information, the agency has to charge a fee sufficient to cover its costs; that is required by Parliament. However, it cannot make a profit from that. There is a small charge—I think it is £2—for an authorised person with just cause who applies to see the information.
For example, if the hon. Gentleman went to the House of Commons car park tonight, found a dent on the back of his car and managed to get the number of the red Alfa Romeo shooting up the ramp in the opposite direction, he might want to approach the DVLA and say, “This person dinged my car and drove off without telling me. May I have their contact information so that I can make them pay for the damage to my car?” He would find out that it had not been my red Alfa Romeo, because I, of course, would have told him what had happened, although the car might have belonged to the right hon. Member for East Yorkshire (Mr. Knight).
The point is that that would be a legitimate reason for the hon. Gentleman to access the vehicle records. However, I think it is equally reasonable for the DVLA to charge him a sufficient sum to cover its costs in providing him with that information. That is the situation: the DVLA does not make a profit, but it does charge enough just to cover its costs.

Owen Paterson: On that basis, is it correct that any organisation can ring up the DVLA and ask for such information?

Stephen Ladyman: When one contacts the DVLA and asks for such information, there is a code of practice that the DVLA goes through to check why they are asking for it. They have to provide just cause within the terms of the code of practice that the DVLA uses to determine that. If an organisation routinely wants access to the information, it has to go through a procedure with the DVLA to justify its business practices, to agree to accept a code of practice of its own, to agree to use the information only for the  purpose for which it is requested, and to provide on each occasion the reason why it is asking for that particular piece of information.
That is the cause of the current furore. Some people are of the view that the organisations that routinely have access to the information in that way have not been properly scrutinised, and that the DVLA might have allowed too wide a group of people to have that routine access. That is why we have agreed to a consultation. If that consultation requires it, we will tighten things up to restrict access to that information.
However, I hope that the hon. Gentleman agrees that in the two examples I have given—someone who wants to enforce car parking in a private car park but without using wheel clampers, and a private individual who wants to check who has dinged his car—it might be reasonable for the person concerned to have such information. What we have to do is ensure that, while tightening up in respect of the people to whom it is reasonable to give the information, we exclude those people who may be unfairly and unreasonably using it at present.

Lee Scott: If the wrong information is given out from Swansea and that causes difficulties or embarrassment for the person the information is about, will compensation be available?

Stephen Ladyman: The only circumstances in which I can imagine that the wrong information might be given out are if somebody gave the wrong registration number and therefore the wrong personal details were presented, or if somebody had wrongly registered the vehicle. However, I would have to check on that. My understanding is that if it was DVLA’s fault that somebody had been damaged in some way, it would probably want to provide compensation, but if it was the fault of the individual requesting the information, it would not be responsible for that. However, as I said, I will check up on that and provide the hon. Gentleman with information on it.
The clauses are not about the vehicle record, on which the current consultation is focused. They are about the driver record, and, because the legal record is that piece of paper held by the driver, it is currently only shown to those people who can legally demand it, such as the police, or to somebody to whom the driver wants to show it. It is our intention in the first instance that access to the driver record will be granted to that same group of people—those who have a legal right to check the driver record. However, the amendment tabled by the hon. Member for Wimbledon would remove the power we are seeking. We want the Secretary of State to be able to ask Parliament for the power to extend access to the driver record into other areas, such as for the Hackney cab licensing authorities. Also, maybe—I stress “maybe”, because I do not want this to be in the headlines tomorrow—one day we will want to give insurance companies access to the record. That is a subject that, perhaps, we should debate.
I conclude by saying that I can give the hon. Gentleman the assurance that any claim for compensation would be looked at on its merits, and compensated appropriately.

Alistair Carmichael: On behalf of my hon. Friend the Member for Rochdale (Paul Rowen), I also welcome you to the Chair, Mrs. Anderson. Our deliberations so far been good natured and reasonable for the most part.
I did not intend to catch your eye on this amendment, Mrs. Anderson, because the power that the Secretary of State seeks to take to himself in subsection (2)(e) is not exceptional, but the hon. Member for Wimbledon was right to highlight the practice—increasingly common in the drafting of legislation—that when everyone who might be expected to require access to information has been listed, a general power is added to include anyone who might be thought of at a later date. That is a rather sloppy and lazy way of drafting and does not make good law, but it is depressingly common and not exceptional.
The Minister has persuaded me that the subject is a matter of rather greater import than I had realised. He raised the question of access by different people, and although it is not directly germane to the amendments, it is worth considering his example of insurance companies. I am exceptionally reluctant to allow insurance companies to have access to the DVLA database.
My experience of the DVLA is that it is not infallible and that when it makes mistakes it is exceptionally difficult to rectify them. I know from professional experience of dealing with driving offences that they are occasionally recorded wrongly—for example, they are recorded against someone who has never had a conviction, or the penalty or disposal is shown wrongly. In cases that I have dealt with, I have had to trawl through sheriff court records and obtain letters from sheriff clerks stating that there was no record of a disposal in respect of a particular person in a particular court on a particular date.

Stephen Ladyman: Were we to want to give access to insurance companies—I stress the words “were we”—it would be allowed only when someone had made an application for an insurance quotation and had told the insurance company that they had a certain number of points, whether nought, nine or whatever. If the insurance company checked the DVLA record and it aligned with what the customer had said, clearly no mistake could have been made. If the DVLA record differed from what the customer had said, clearly there would be a discussion and it would be known that either the individual had told a fib or the DVLA had made a mistake. It would be obvious to everyone that inquiries were needed one way or the other. The suggestion that someone could be damaged without knowing about it because insurance companies had access to the DVLA database is not accurate.

Alistair Carmichael: If only life were so simple. I am afraid that the Minister has greater confidence and faith in insurance companies than I do. My  expectation is that insurance would simply be refused and the practice of many insurance companies in such cases is simply not to enter into correspondence about the reasons for refusal. If the person seeking the insurance subsequently applied to another insurance company they would be required, if they were to be truthful, to say that they had applied for insurance with another insurance company and been refused. Suddenly their application would come under a different level of scrutiny, which could have implications for premiums and so on. Does the Minister really want to pursue the matter?

Stephen Ladyman: I do not want to get into a long debate about something that is only an idea that we might want to pursue, but I say again that the alternative is for people to continue in their current practice of wholesale lying to their insurance companies. That practice means that drivers like me, who have addressed their offending behaviour and now have a clean licence, are paying more than we ought to for drivers who are kidding the insurance companies.

Alistair Carmichael: The Minister’s contrition is a model to us all. We have probably taken the question of insurance companies as far as it can go, but I am grateful to him for having raised that example. Such powers come with a strong health warning, and he has served the Committee well by giving us an example of how dangerous they can be.
My other point is perhaps a little more positive. Subsection (2) reads:
“The Secretary of State may make arrangements for the following persons to have access, by such means as the Secretary of State may determine, to information held on a person’s driving record”.
Might clerks of court, for example, be allowed direct access from their own computer terminals in the courts? I see the Minister nodding. That is exceptionally helpful. The time lost in court cases waiting for print-outs from the DVLA, whatever their quality when they eventually arrive, has been exceptionally costly. If we can circumvent that, it is certainly to be encouraged.
The point that interests me, however—perhaps the Minister will clarify it—is that the provision says
“by such means as the Secretary of State may determine”.
How is it envisaged that that would be done? Clearly a power is given to the Secretary of State, but it does not seem to be one that would require any further reference to Parliament. That ties in with the possibility under paragraph (e) of extending the list of people. I would have no difficulty with the Secretary of State being able to issue guidance to the DVLA allowing certain people access at their computers, but if the
“other persons prescribed in regulations”
under paragraph (e) were to be more broadly framed, I would certainly want some reference back to Parliament, not just on the list of people who would be allowed access but on the means by which they would be allowed access.

Stephen Ladyman: I shall give the hon. Gentleman the information that he seeks. How authorised persons might access the information could be determined routinely by the Secretary of State—he would simply issue an instruction on how it was to happen—but he would have to come back to Parliament to get permission on who would have access. Were he to come back to Parliament for permission for somebody not on the list, one of the questions that Parliament would ask would concern how they were to get that information. Although that would not necessarily be in the statutory instrument, I have no doubt that it would be something to which he would have to give a solid answer when the debate came to Parliament.
Mr. Henry Bellingham (North-West Norfolk) (Con) rose—

Alistair Carmichael: If the hon. Member for North-West Norfolk (Mr. Bellingham) can contain himself for a second, I am sure that his remarks will be worth waiting for. I accept the Minister’s assurances and thank him for his assistance.

Henry Bellingham: I want to ask the Minister a couple of practical questions, because we have had quite a lot of theory this morning. In my constituency, we have recently seen a large increase in the number of overseas drivers. There is a large Portuguese community in and around Swaffham and Thetford in Norfolk, many of whom work in agriculture-related businesses such as food processing. A lot of growers in the area are using Portuguese labour. They are very welcome because they work extremely hard, and they are of course EU drivers.
Will the Minister elaborate on the Dutch case mentioned in the explanatory notes—the case that went to the European Court on the grounds of discrimination? The previous system operated on the basis that an EU driver stopped by the UK police showed their national licence, and there would be no legal counterpart on which an endorsement or points could be recorded, although there would be a court record of the offence. EU drivers are a great deal easier to track down because of reciprocal arrangements.
However, there is a large number of eastern European workers in Norfolk, who add a lot of value to the local economy. When the Prime Minister said that residents of accession countries would come to this country only in small numbers, he hugely underestimated what would happen. There are very many Latvian, Estonian and Polish workers in Norfolk, who are based mainly in the agricultural sector. They add a lot of value, they are welcome and they have integrated well into the community, and most of them are here only for a short time.
Unfortunately, however, there has been a number of incidents where drivers have been stopped by the police and where accidents have taken place from  which the drivers have driven off. There have also been cases where the police have gone to the homes where these workers have been staying to try to track them down. When they co-operate, there is no problem, but I put it to the Minister that when they do not co-operate, the police have many problems.
By definition, we are talking about people in temporary jobs; they are part of a transient community which moves on the whole time, very often from one part of the local economy to another. I am not suggesting for one moment that they have not added a degree of vibrancy to the local economy, but there have been at least 10 cases where driving offences have been committed after which the police have tried to track people down and have failed to do so. Will the Minister tell us which provision in this set of clauses, which he has explained are part of a package, would assist in such cases?
If there is a legal counterpart, presumably it will be held at the DVLA. Let us say a Latvian driver is stopped for speeding. Under the current system, he must produce his licence to the police. He will receive not a fixed penalty notice but a court summons, and he must give his address. That process works only if he co-operates. Under the new system, presumably there will be no legal counterpart issued to him until an offence is committed. Is that correct? A legal counterpart will be issued to a non-EU driver only when an offence has been committed and he has gone to court—in other words, when something needs to be recorded. Perhaps the Minister would elaborate on that.
I know that the Norfolk constabulary is concerned about that problem, because there has been a growing number of cases involving young drivers from non-EU countries, who have been driving recklessly and dangerously and have committed driving offences. The police tell me that if those people refuse to co-operate, they are virtually powerless to do anything about it.

Stephen Ladyman: All will become clear to the hon. Gentleman when we discuss the subsequent amendments, because they concern the power to tackle that problem. However, the subsequent amendments are dependent on these provisions, because without them the police cannot issue fixed penalty notices at all. If they could not issue them because someone did not have a counterpart driving licence, the subsequent amendments, which refer to the ability to take a deposit or immobilise someone’s vehicle if the police do not think the address is real, would not work.
If the hon. Gentleman will forgive me, I shall answer most of his questions when we come to a later group of amendments, which I assure him will not work if we do not agree to these provisions.

Stephen Hammond: The Minister’s explanation was absolutely correct, although I suspect he may wish to address some of the points made by my hon. Friend the Member for North-West Norfolk under clause 10 as well. I am grateful to the Minister for giving us a useful introduction to this set of clauses. He will understand that I wish to explore clause 9, schedule 2 and clause 10 in a little more depth.
I am afraid I do not share the confidence of the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Carmichael) that we have finished with insurance for the day. I suspect that this afternoon, under clause 21, we shall detain ourselves for rather longer than we have on this clause. A forerunner of that is the Minister’s statement that people knowingly try to kid insurance companies. Indeed, a large number of people do, but a large number of people have genuine slips of the mind as well, and I am sure we will want to explore that point under clause 21. However, I am grateful to the Minister for his helpful and useful clarifications in respect of my amendments. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Clause 8 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 9 - Unlicensed and foreign drivers

Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.

Stephen Hammond: I do not want to detain the Committee too long on this part of the Bill. As with clause 8, we support entirely the thrust of the Government’s purpose. However, as I have not had the opportunity before, I wish to explore three items with the Minister.
Throughout subsection (3) there is continual reference to “particulars”. Could the Minister clarify exactly what they are? I assume that they are about the nature of the fine, custodial sentence or courses attended, as the subsection already refers to fixed penalty points. Particulars are something extra, and I would like to hear what the Minister has to say about them.
I understand that the intent of the clause is that non-holders of UK licences can get an endorsement on their record. Is the intent also that UK citizens who are unlicensed and who have driven without a licence should get an endorsement on their record prior to getting a licence, or will the fixed penalty notice be only a fine for such individuals?
Finally, proposed new section 57A refers to a sum being paid to the fixed penalty clerk and the fixed penalty clerk sending notice to the Secretary of State about the endorsement. What happens if an unlicensed individual does not pay? Am I right in thinking that those circumstances will be caught by clause 11, which deals with deposits, or will a separate prosecution be necessary? There is also reference to payments within the suspended enforcement period, but I would like to know what will happen at the end of it. Will there be an increase in the fixed penalty notice and, possibly, punishment? If the Minister clarified those points, I am sure that we could move on swiftly.

Stephen Ladyman: I shall do my best to clarify those points. Clause 9 is about unlicensed and foreign drivers. Proposed new section 57A in the Road Traffic Offenders Act 1988 describes the process for endorsing  driving records that might be needed in the future. If the driver has requested a hearing, the driving record cannot be endorsed, but if a payment has been made, the fixed penalty clerk must inform the Secretary of State—in practice, the DVLA—of the details to be endorsed on the driving record, including the particulars of the offence, the date it was committed and the number of penalty points attributed. In cases where payment has not been made by the end of the suspended enforcement period, the fixed penalty clerk will forward the endorsement details to the Secretary of State.
These clauses came about as a result of the situation alluded to by the hon. Member for North-West Norfolk. A Dutch citizen committed an offence that, for a British driver, would have been an opportunity for a fixed penalty notice, but she could not be issued with a fixed penalty notice because she did not have a counterpart. She had to go to court, where the potential fine was much greater and, in addition, she had court costs. She argued correctly that she was being discriminated against because, had she been a British citizen, she would not have had to go through that procedure. This group of clauses is intended to rectify that situation and allow people who for good reason do not have a counterpart to their licence to be treated in the same way as British citizens. I hope that that is sufficient explanation for the hon. Gentleman.

Stephen Hammond: That certainly addresses the point I was trying to reach with my third group of points about proposed new section 57A. I understand that clause 11 will be helpful, as it will enable the taking of the fixed penalty deposit. It will cover that circumstance, and I just wanted to clarify as much.
The Minister has not clarified—I am sure he will do so quickly—the provision in proposed new section 44A, which states:
“endorsement of a person’s driving record with any particulars or penalty points”.
Will he confirm that the particulars are fines, custodial sentences, anything that the magistrate or court might say and any courses attended as reparation for or for making good someone’s driving habit? Is that what particulars means?

Stephen Ladyman: Broadly speaking, the hon. Gentleman is right. Particulars refers to the offence code, fixed penalty fine, the date of the offence and any penalty points issued.

Greg Knight: I rise to ask the Minister how he envisages the system working for someone who is from overseas and refuses to co-operate with the police, as in the case described by my hon. Friend the Member for North-West Norfolk. If that person were a multiple or—if I may put it this way—serial fixed penalty receiver, and he received a ticket and continued to commit offences, would there be a mechanism to deal with them? There must come a point when the driving record is such that the police  want to consider further action. How does the Minister see the system working in the case of someone who will not co-operate, may not have much use of English, and may give an address which is a caravan moving around Norfolk?

Stephen Ladyman: There are two answers: one answer is in the Bill, and we shall come to it when we discuss under clause 11 the ability to take deposits and to immobilise vehicles if we do not think that somebody has a suitable address. The other answer—this is where my officials might start to panic, because I am going to lapse into areas of legislation and European directives that are not directly part of the Bill—is in the second EU driving licence directive. It puts in place a mechanism whereby EU countries will recognise the penalty points, endorsements and licences of each other’s country.
The right hon. Gentleman will forgive me for speaking from memory, but I think that the directive does not come into force until every member state has ratified it, and currently only three have done so. It provides for bilateral agreements between member states to try to deal with the situation. So far, we have entered into a bilateral arrangement with the Irish Government to recognise each other’s driving licences. If somebody loses their licence in the UK, they will not be able to return to Ireland to get another one; likewise, if somebody loses their licence in Ireland, they need not think that they can come to the UK to get a licence.
The arrangement has been complex, because Ireland’s totting up system is different from ours and much negotiation is required to reach synergy in two different legal systems. It is complicated and it takes a long time. Given that it will take even longer—almost glacial periods—to get EU-wide agreement to all those arrangements, we must do the best that we can in the meantime. This set of clauses and clause 11, which provide powers to take deposits, immobilise vehicles and change our arrangements so that the counterpart licence is not necessary to access our fixed penalty point system, are the best that we can do in the meantime.
I freely acknowledge that a thorough EU-wide system of checking each other’s driving records and licences with synergy of our legal systems would be better, but it will be a long time coming.

Stephen Hammond: May I ask the Minister for further clarification on two points that I mentioned earlier? First, am I right that the clause does not deal with unlicensed UK citizens, but with only unlicensed foreign citizens? Secondly, at the moment, if one receives a parking fine, it is a fixed penalty fine and not endorsable. If one pays within a certain amount of time, one pays a certain amount, after which the amount is increased. There are continual references in the clause to payments within the suspended period. Is it intended that someone who makes a payment after the suspended period—either because they knowingly decide to, or because it slips their mind—will be  covered by the deposit that has already been taken? If not, is there an increase in the amount that would be paid?

Greg Knight: I am grateful for the Minister’s answer to my earlier question. He mentioned the European directive. As recently as last year there was a view in Europe that a new driving licence directive should require all member states to issue short-term licences for, say, five years, with regular eye and health checks when licences came up for renewal. That runs contrary to our system, in which licences are generally issued until the driver reaches retirement age. Will the Minister confirm that the Government’s view is the same as it was18 months ago—that that proposal should be resisted?

Stephen Ladyman: I can certainly confirm that we would resist that. The third European driving licence directive will be discussed at the Transport Council in Brussels on Monday, which I shall attend on behalf of the Government. There are no such recommendations in that directive. I suspect that it will be adopted by the Council on Monday, although the Government are resisting parts. Not for the first time, however, we stand alone, and therefore it will be adopted. Nevertheless, I assure the right hon. Gentleman that the third driving licence directive does not include the sort of measure to which he refers. It may be an ambition of some Eurocrat for the fourth or fifth directive, but that is a battle for the far distant future.
On the question raised by the hon. Member for Wimbledon, my understanding is that if the fine is not paid within a specified period it can be recorded as an outstanding debt. One would hope, though—subject to the Committee’s agreement to the clauses following this group—that we will not get into that situation. I hope that, if a policeman is not convinced that an individual is contactable and has a proper address, the vehicle will be clamped at the road-side until such time as that person has been to the cash machine and returned with some money. The situation that the hon. Gentleman mentions might arise if such drivers were caught by a speed camera, and the police were not dealing with the individual at the time. In those circumstances, the debt would be recorded and efforts would be made to recover it later.

Stephen Hammond: The Minister has been helpful on several issues that we wished to probe.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 9 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Schedule 2 - Endorsement: unlicensed and foreign drivers

Question proposed, that this schedule be the Second schedule to the Bill.

Stephen Hammond: I understand that clause 9 will enact schedule 2. There has been much clarification from the Minister, for which I am grateful, but I have just a couple of questions. Paragraph 6 of the schedule  relates to people who will be disqualified if they have a fixed penalty notice served on them. Am I right in thinking that in all circumstances they would then be referred to the court and that there is no situation in which they could accept the fixed penalty notice, be disqualified and have their 12-month ban start then? Am I right in thinking that, in all circumstances, if people are served with a fixed penalty notice that takes them to 12 points under the totting up system, they would have to go to court?
Secondly, under proposed new section 84A, I should like to be reassured that the
 “particulars as the Secretary of State may determine”
are exactly those about which we sought reassurance in the stand part debate. Does the Minister anticipate any circumstances where those particulars might differ under this schedule?

Stephen Ladyman: I hope that I have understood the hon. Gentleman’s query correctly. The clause allows the police the same powers to check the driving record, when the record is the DVLA database, as they currently have to check the driving record from the counterpart. The schedule will remove all references to “counterpart” in existing legislation, because that will no longer be a legal necessity.
Incidentally, in my experience, when people receive a new driving licence—a plastic card and a counterpart—they almost always say, “Why do we have both things?” The answer in future, once the Bill is enacted, will be, “You don’t need both any more. The only thing that you will ever need to show a policeman is the little plastic card that comes with your driving licence. Anything else that the DVLA chooses to send with your licence will simply be a convenience and will have no legal standing.” That is the purpose of the schedule.
I understand that the officer will check the driving record first, and if a fixed penalty would lead to disqualification, the case will be referred to court. That is the same as the present situation. The hon. Gentleman has not had the experience, as my hon. Friend the hon. Member for Glasgow, South and I have had, of the police writing to us, saying that they caught us on their camera and that we have the opportunity to accept a fixed penalty or go to court and argue the case. If people decide to accept the fixed penalty, they send their licence and counterpart to the police so that the driving record can be checked. If the police see that a person has nine points, they do not issue a fixed penalty, but say that they have to go direct to court. In future, they will not need to do that; when the police write and tell them they have the fine and they reply, saying that they will take the fixed penalty rather than go to court, the police will just check the DVLA record, which will be the real driver’s record, so people will not need to send their licence to the police any more. That is the essential difference. However, people who have totted up sufficient points so that the next points that they receive mean a ban will still have to go to court and answer the case.

Greg Knight: Presumably, this change will not lead to any change in the practice in the courts. At present, once the points on a driver’s licence have expired, he can send it away for no other reason than to have them removed and a clean counterpart issued. Will the Minister confirm that when the courts are dealing with a defendant under the new system, although the clerk of the court will have access to the driving record, he will still be under a duty not to refer to points that are spent?

Stephen Ladyman: That is correct. As I said earlier, although I have addressed my offending behaviour and now have a clean licence, my counterpart still has a record of my endorsements, which are now four years old. Although endorsements last only for three years, a person cannot apply for a clean licence for four years in case they appear in court between the third and fourth years, at which time the court would need to be able to look back to see that they had committed their fourth offence during the three years when they had nine points. After four years, the person can send the counterpart back, and they will be sent a clean piece of paper. That is what I intend to do in the very near future. Under the new arrangements, the convictions will simply be expunged automatically from the computer record when they are four years old, so the courts will have no knowledge of them if they look at the database.
Let us say that the courts looked at the database because a person happened to be in court for a fourth offence. The previous three offences were committed within three years, but the fourth was committed outside those three years. That could not lead to the person being disqualified; clearly, they would not have enough points to be disqualified if the latter offence was committed outside the three years. I hope that the right hon. Gentleman understands what I mean. Basically, the answer to his question is yes, the provision does not change current practice; it just changes how it will be administered.

Greg Knight: I understand the Minister perfectly. I am well aware of why points stay on for four years: it is because the totting-up system runs from the date of conviction to the date of offence, and one could then appear in court in the fourth year, but for an offence committed in year three. I understand that. But when the Minister says “expunged”, does he mean expunged? I am thinking back to an earlier debate. If an insurance company had access to the record, it would not be right and proper if it could identify spent convictions that, although not referred to in court, were still on the record.

Stephen Ladyman: The convictions are expunged. I asked that very question of my colleagues in the DVLA yesterday, with all the cynicism of a former computer systems designer who knows how lazy software and database designers are, and who knows their willingness to leave information on the record just in case it might be needed in future. I checked that  specific point and was assured that the convictions are deleted. They are not available to anybody after they are spent.

Alistair Carmichael: My apologies, Mrs. Anderson; I had to leave the room briefly, and I am not sure whether the Minister is speaking or being intervened on. I am curious about this business. I can see the force of what the Minister says in relation to fixed penalties that come from outwith the court system, but not all penalty points are imposed in that way. A lot are imposed through courts. Surely they cannot just be removed from the driver record. Having that information available must be relevant to the court’s considerations.

Stephen Ladyman: I am equally confused as to whether I am making a statement or being intervened on, but as long as Mrs. Anderson is happy, I am happy.
I will check on the hon. Gentleman’s point. Clearly, if the court has imposed a sentence, it may have a record of it, but my understanding is that, as far as the driver record is concerned, the DVLA deletes any points that may exist on a driving licence. However, I will certainly check that for the hon. Gentleman.

Question put and agreed to.

Schedule 2 agreed to.

Clause 10 - All drivers

Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.

Stephen Hammond: The Minister referred to this set of clauses as a whole in his opening remarks on the amendments tackled under clause 8, but I want to pick him up on one or two things that he said then, because I understand that they should rightly be dealt with under clause 10.
The clause introduces the new system of endorsement that we have talked so much about this morning. It is based on the inspection of the driving record rather than the counterpart. As I understand the clause, and as the Minister has made clear, the counterpart is currently a legal document, but will cease to exist as one. In attempting to clarify what will happen for their lordships, the Government spokesman in the other place said:
“in place of the counterpart ... there will be a document containing information useful to a driver”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 27 June 2005; Vol. 673, c. 62.]
Is the counterpart being replaced, and if so, exactly what is replacing it? Am I right in thinking that whatever replaces it will not be a legal document? Exactly what information will be held on it? We have touched on the way in which it will be updated and changed, but some questions remain open about exactly how the system will work, and I am keen to hear the answers. Will there be a replacement to the counterpart for every driver and how will the driver be notified of the changes? How will the driver be able to correct the information, if it is erroneous, on the  record or on the non-legal document that is given to him? Under the present system, all of that is relatively obvious, but it is not clear how it will work under the new system. If there is a document or record for each driver, will there be electronic access to it? From what the Minister said, there clearly will be, so we will need to debate potential misuse.
On Tuesday night we tackled a number of amendments on the clause, and the misgivings that we had then have not receded. In spite of the Minister’s assurances, we remain extremely concerned about the extension of Vehicle and Operator Services Agency examiners’ powers. Is it necessary? There is little evidence that VOSA examiners have had training to the standard of the police laid down in the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 on the rules of evidence or the necessary contemporaneous notes. As we said, we believe that VOSA examiners should be able to stop a vehicle and prevent it from driving on the roads, but we are reluctant to accept the Minister’s reasons for changing the status quo.
Let us say that it is a dark night and someone out there in overalls is trying to flag down a vehicle, which has a lady driver. If somebody steps out into the middle of the road and tries to flag her down, she will not recognise them as officialdom or authority and may understandably be cautious about stopping. In those circumstances, I would be too. Under the current system, vehicles are usually flagged down by the police. They are then inspected by VOSA examiners, who do their job and are accredited, as the Minister said, under his regulations. The police then issue, or not, the fixed penalty notice.
I ask the Minister to reconsider what he said about how it would pervert the clause and his purpose if VOSA examiners could not issue fixed penalty points. Opposition Members accept their power to stop a vehicle and prevent it from moving on, but we remain extremely uneasy about extending their powers. I ask the Minister to think again about that, and I should be grateful for any reassurance that he can give on my questions about the replacement document.

Stephen Ladyman: I shall deal first with the replacement document. The hon. Gentleman is right: if the Bill is passed, the counterpart will have no legal standing. In theory, therefore, when the DVLA sends an individual a driving licence, it could send simply the piece of plastic in an envelope, with nothing else in it. Clearly it would not be good business practice to send a piece of plastic with no explanation of what it was or how it was to be used. We would need to send people a holder for it, it needs to be held in the envelope and it needs some explanatory material. That explanatory material will have no legal standing. However, we will ensure that, in essence, it is the same information as that currently carried on the counterpart, so the individual will know what categories of vehicle they are entitled to drive, when they reach the age when the licence must be renewed and what endorsements are on the licence.
The endorsements will not be marked on the piece of plastic: they will be held on a computer somewhere else. Therefore, when the police want to check the endorsements, they will have to use the piece of plastic  to obtain the information that they need to access the remote database. It is important that people have a piece of paper that says what their endorsements are. Whenever they get new ones and the driving record is changed, we will ensure that we write to tell them that that has happened.

Stephen Hammond: I think I understood the Minister correctly. We were talking about the piece of plastic that we will all have. Is it now the Government’s intention that it will be necessary for someone to have it with them when driving?

Stephen Ladyman: No more than it is currently the practice that we require people to have their driving licence with them when driving. Some people do and some do not. The police will be able to require people to present it to them at some point in the future. However, my personal view is that people would be best advised to keep it with them when driving, because as they will not have to have the counterpart with it, it will be a much more convenient document. It will help to facilitate the police’s work should they ever need to see it. It will also mean that the police do not think that someone is the sort of person who might not have a fixed address. They might be inclined to want a deposit from someone or to immobilise their car if for some reason they suspected that that person was not all that they said they were. It would be helpful for people to have the card with them, but we will not make that compulsory, and have no intention to do so, any more than it is currently compulsory to carry one’s driving licence.

Greg Knight: Will the driver have the right, under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 or any other Act, to look at his record? He might take the view that the explanatory piece of paper, which has no legal standing, might not be compatible with his record. He might want to verify that the DVLA is keeping an accurate record of what points are recorded against him. Will it be possible for a motorist to request to see the original record held on him?

Stephen Ladyman: I might be about to get myself into trouble, because I am unsure whether I have announced this publicly and told Parliament about it in the proper way. The Department for Transport and the DVLA are keen for there to be electronic access to all records.
The right hon. Gentleman will doubtless have renewed his car tax many times—11 times, I think, in his particular case. I hope that some of the vehicles he has to renew the tax on in the future will benefit from the Budget. I suspect most of them will not, but never mind. He can now renew his car tax online for vehicles that are less than three years old. I realise that many of his vehicles are heritage vehicles and therefore he will not be able to do that until they have a valid MOT. By the end of this financial year—this month—every MOT centre will be computerised and the MOTs will also be online. Soon, everyone will be able to renew their car tax online without ever going to a post office or touching a piece of paper.
We intend that people should also be able to amend and deal with their driving records in exactly the same way. I have asked questions of my officials about security arrangements. I need to convince myself that only the individual who holds the driving licence will be able to get electronic access to their driving record. Once I am convinced about that, that is what we intend to do. Everyone will be able to see their driving record and their endorsements online, just as they can see their vehicle details online. I hope that answers the right hon. Gentleman’s question.
Let us move on to VOSA. Before I address the points made by the hon. Member for Wimbledon, may I say something to the right hon. Member for East Yorkshire? On Tuesday, I think he used the expression “swinish followers”. It was entirely jocular and we all took it as good natured. However, there was a spokesman from VOSA in the gallery listening to his comments. The organisation is entirely professional and would not take umbrage to that comment in any way, shape or form. However, if I were him, I would make sure that all my 15 vehicles were thoroughly roadworthy

Greg Knight: I was not seeking to be gratuitously offensive. A person might be an ace vehicle examiner who knows the construction and use regulations backwards, but he may be swinishly ignorant of the rules of evidence. He may not have the expertise of a police officer when dealing with a member of the public. I hope that I never have first-hand experience of knowing whether that is true.

Stephen Ladyman: I am sure that most members of the Committee understood what the right hon. Gentleman was getting at. If examiners are now checking the roads of East Yorkshire for heritage Bentleys more assiduously than previously, I am sure that it has nothing to do with his comments.
I say to the right hon. Gentleman and to the hon. Member for Wimbledon that such people are trained in the rules of evidence. They have to collect the evidence and use the same procedures to take something through the legal system—to issue fixed penalties or go through the court—as the police. I have no reason to believe that their training is any one wit less than that given to a police officer. They are excellent vehicle examiners and excellently trained in the procedures necessary to gather evidence and issue penalty notices. They use high-visibility Ford Galaxy vans with automatic number plate reading equipment, light-bars and variable messaging facilities to carry out mobile stopping exercises. They are uniformed, police trained and accredited. Frankly, I do not know what more I can do to give hon. Members the reassurance that they seek, other than to say that I am personally absolutely satisfied that there is no question but that they have received the appropriate training needed to do the job thoroughly and professionally, and with every bit the same level of accuracy as the police.

Stephen Hammond: I thank the Minister for his comments. We shall give the matter further thought. As we said on Tuesday, we may wish to re-examine it on Report.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 10 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Schedule 3 agreed to.

Clause 11 - Financial penalty deposits

Stephen Hammond: I beg to move amendment No. 49, in clause 11, page 9, line 26, at end insert—
‘(c)that the motor vehicle is not registered in the United Kingdom, and
(d)that the person is not resident at an address in the United Kingdom or an address in the United Kingdom at which the constable considers it likely that it will be possible to find the person.’.

Janet Anderson: With this it will be convenient to discuss the following amendments: No. 50, in clause 11, page 9, line 33, leave out subsection (4).
No. 51, in clause 11, page 10, line 7, leave out from ‘in’ to ‘and’ and insert
‘cash, bank-backed funds, debit card, credit card or cleared cheque’.
No. 52, in clause 11, page 10, line 11, leave out
‘in an order made by the Secretary of State’
and insert
‘up to a maximum of £2,500’.

Stephen Hammond: We are fully with the Government on the clause. It is right and goes to the heart of the current problem that my hon. Friend the Member for North-West Norfolk described, when occasionally serial offenders or offenders who are stopped in the United Kingdom are either issued with fixed penalty notices or fines and do not pay them, or indeed are from overseas and do not pay them.
The amendments would first place criteria under proposed section 90A(2) to the Road Traffic Offenders Act 1988 that examiners must have reason to believe are true. That would give them more latitude than the Government have done. The provision is aimed not only at those from overseas who do not wish to comply with our laws, but at the group to which my hon. Friend the Member for North Shropshire (Mr. Paterson) referred in his remarks on clause 1—individuals who seek continually to flout the motoring laws of our country, causing much danger to other people on the roads.
There is a small group of persistent and continual offenders. We want to help the Government and to make sure that the Bill attacks those people. Proposed paragraph (c) to section 90A(2) to the 1988 Act states:
“the motor vehicle is not registered in the United Kingdom”.
That would cover not only foreign vehicles that may be flouting the law, but the huge number of people, representing up to 5 per cent. of the vehicles on our roads, who drive cars without a licence. It should be  clear that such people can be caught. We think that the amendment would clarify what I think is the intention of paragraph (a).
The amendment would move much of what is in proposed subsection (4) into our new subsection (2)(d) to cover not only overseas offenders, but UK citizens who have been persistently problematic, as they are either not resident at the address they have given or not there when the police call. It would give the police far greater power to attack that group of consistent and persistent offenders. I hope that the Government recognise the intention of the amendment: to give the police greater powers to impose fixed penalty notices on such offenders.

Henry Bellingham: My hon. Friend is explaining the amendments extremely well. One of the challenges is that many such foreign drivers live in houses of multiple occupation or hostels. As my right hon. Friend the Member for East Yorkshire pointed out, they sometimes live in caravans. They can be here for a very short period and they will be on the move the whole time. It is difficult to pin them down, which is why it is so important to toughen the clause up.

Stephen Hammond: I am grateful to my hon. Friend; that is exactly the purpose of the amendment.
Amendment No. 50 is merely consequential on amendment No. 49, so I shall turn to our other amendments. We could have a long discussion about the payment of the appropriate amount to the Secretary of State, and the words
“in a manner specified in an order made by him”.
As I said, we see no reason why some detail on that could not be put into the Bill. The offence is serious, and the Government ought to have the opportunity to take a proper deposit that would cover a number of circumstances. A maximum of £2,500 would do that.
We could clarify the means through which the Government took the money. They could take cash—cash is what it is, unless it is counterfeit; we shall assume that it would not be. They could take bank-backed funds, making it perfectly possible for a visitor from overseas to present a traveller’s cheque or show a bank-accredited deposit note. Equally, it would be possible to use a debit or credit card, which will be relatively instantaneous; the Government could be sure of getting the funds. They could also receive a cleared UK cheque.
The Secretary of State would wish to take the payment of the appropriate amount by those methods, so we see no reason why the Minister should be uncertain about whether they should be in the Bill. I look forward to hearing from him about the other methods through which he would wish the deposit to be taken, and to his argument—or not—on why we should leave the maximum, which we suggest should be £2,500, to be decided by secondary legislation.

It being twenty-five minutes past Ten o’clock, The Chairman adjourned the Committee without Question put, pursuant to the Standing Order.

Adjourned till this day at One o’clock.